The Pest Control Blog North America

Have you ever wondered where the idea for catching cockroaches on glue traps came from?

In 1969, Arnold Mallis wrote in the fifth edition of ‘The Handbook of Pest Control’ that cockroaches could be successfully trapped with tin cans coated in Vaseline. Ten years later, cardboard adhesive traps aimed at the detection and control of cockroaches was an industry valued at $10M.

The proliferation of cockroaches, particularly the German cockroach, in urban housing coupled with restrictions on popular insecticides led to a sharp rise in reported problems. Read More »

Picture this: you’re sitting at the table, happily eating dinner, while mere feet below your chair, small worm-like creatures are tunneling through the wooden support structures of the floor that’s holding you up.

If you head down into the basement below and listen quietly, you may even hear the telltale “clicking” sound of the larvae as they excavate their galleries in the timbers they infest. What are these wood destroying pests? Isn’t wood destruction a job reserved for termites? Read More »

In honor of Pollinator Week, we are going to take the time to highlight some of the most undervalued creatures on our earth, pollinating insects. Most people do not realize how important this group of animals are for the sustainability of our planet. For those of you that do not know, the role of a pollinator is to move the pollen of a plant from a male anther of a flower to the female stigma of a flower. This fertilizes the female gamete of the flower with the male gamete coming from the pollen. This process is important because we depend on these creatures to help pollinate crops.

The most common pollinator is the bee, but also insects such as beetles, butterflies, flies, moths and wasps help pollinate plants. There are also a variety of other pollinators that include bears, bats, birds and even humans! Read More »

Almost all of the time, Pest Control is a very serious business where there is not much room for fun, but last week, on June 4th, we at Ehrlich Pest Control hosted a pop-up “Pestaurant” in Washington, DC in which pests were an integral part of the menu. The event held at “DC power restaurant” Occidental Grill was but one of the many insect-eating events being hosted by our parent company, Rentokil, throughout the world.

Ehrlich donated $5 to the DC Central Kitchen for anyone who chose to eat a pest, and $20 for anyone who entered a cricket-eating contest. Through our efforts at this event, we raised over $6,000 for the kitchen which serves 5,000 meals a week to low-income and at-risk citizens in US capital.

People all around the United States end up having to deal with an inevitable summer occurrence: People vs. Pests. Every summer, people have a power struggle of control on land against pests such as mosquitoes, bees and gnats.

Despite the use of bug spray, these pests come back to bother humans each and every year. You may be aware of pest control measures that can help keep critters out of your home, but what can you do when the battle occurs on the pests’ home field – your backyard? Read More »